Battlefield Studios may already be contending with a serious challenge to Battlefield 6 – and it’s not Call of Duty.
Cheaters have already infiltrated Battlefield 6’s ongoing open beta. One hack allowed players to mark where their opponents were on the other side of the map.
Why These Hacks Are Embarrassing For EA
EA touted their Javelin anti-cheat system in their Battlefield 6 FAQ. They said this:
Javelin Anticheat is EA’s evolving approach to ensuring that our players enjoy a fair gaming experience across all of our published titles.
Javelin has been built from the ground up by a team of veteran engineers and analysts focused on studying cheating problems for each specific game under EA’s umbrella and designing unique features to solve those issues.
Javelin is already part of other Battlefield titles, including Battlefield Labs, and will be integrated in Battlefield 6 when the game launches.
But It Goes Deeper Than That
This news is potentially bad for Activision and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 too. They just announced that they are incorporating TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot into their anti-cheat system, RICOCHET.
Battlefield 6’s Javelin System also uses Secure Boot. Based on these cheaters getting through, Secure Boot may not be that secure after all.
Can EA Still Fix This?
DICE producer Alexia Christofi made a quick reply to this claim:
Team are aware and I believe this player is already banned
Apparently, Christofi is currently on vacation so she may not have the full information on this. But EA may share updates later on. As of this writing, we haven’t seen the Twitter Battlefield or Battlefield Comms accounts mention cheating or explain what they’ll do about it.
We do understand that the point of the beta is to test out Battlefield 6’s system. They are opening their game up to these issues now so they can mitigate it for its actual launch.
It’s Bad Even If EA Fixes It
Battlefield 6‘s security breach is bad, and not because Javelin doesn’t look good right now. This incident makes Secure Boot look bad. It reduces trust this security system can secure your PC.
One could reasonably question why both EA and Activision thought using Secure Boot was a good idea.
EA may fix this issue for Battlefield 6’s launch, because of, and not in spite of, what we’re seeing in the beta. The real question here isn’t really for EA or Activision, but whoever is pitching Secure Boot as a security measure for video games.